The mise-en-scene in
City of God is a key element when it comes to creating the meaning in the
narrative.
The montage scene of 'The
Story of the Apartment' creates strong meaning as well as generating a
response with the use of the mise-en-scene throughout the scene.The scene
starts with a dissolve that establishes that the next piece of footage is as a
flashback to tell the story. The start of the flashback, the apartment is lit
with high key lighting that sets the feeling of a warm and homely environment
which is what the apartments was although it was being used as a drug den
it was so that Dona Zelia could support her family. As the narrative
darkens so does the lighting and the appearance of the apartment; as the
cross dissolve from it being Dona Zelia's apartment to Big Boy taking
control of it the mise-en-scene changes to a more dangerous, and illegal
looking place to be, when Big Boy pulls Dona Zelia out of the apartment she
grabs onto the table cloth pulling it off the table and all the items
falling to the ground showing that being in the drug business won't turn out
well, your whole world will come crashing down, Meirelles (director) took
this concept and made it real through her trying to hold onto what she has
before it all falls within a matter of seconds. This part of the montage shoes
how little the men of the favelas think of the women, as although it
is Dona Zelia's apartment Big Boy just takes advantage of her and
takes over her home; however in the 10 years alter documentary it stated that
although there hasn't been a massive amount of progress in the situation
of life in the favelas women are becoming to get stronger and starting to gain
more rights/respect than what they had in 2002 when City of God
was made As the scene progresses the mise-en-scene changes the
audiences perception of what is happening, because as Big Boy takes over, the
apartment loses its homely look and starts to look like an empty shell of
a home; which, in my eyes, is what happens when drugs become a big part of
somebody's life, they begin to lose sight on everything that is truly important
and only focus on the drugs that are taking over they lives. The
knife that is lodged into the table, I feel, shows this point well as its
unsafe to have a sharp object half stuck into a table, in a home like when
the apartment belonged to Dona Zelia that would never have happened due to
it being her and her daughters' home, however when Big Boy throws her out and
it is no longer hers, there is no need for it to be a safe environment
because they are using the apartment as their den for their drug business which
is also shown in this part of the montage as when Carrot hands drugs over to
one of the neighbourhood kids they use as dealers. The whole of this scene
shows through the cross dissolves of the mise-en-scene changing as
drugs take over family life and life in general.
The second scene I feel
uses mise-en-scene to create meaning and response is the scene where Lil Zé makes Steak and Fries shoot one of the runt as it
creates such a strong response because the setting of the scene is
obviously a real favela like the whole film so it attracts the audiences ethos
to be touched by the reality they’re shown through this film. Also the two
runts being backed into the corner shows that there is no escaping people like
Lil Zé’s gang while living in the favelas and
they were to be feared, in the 10 years later documentary the younger of
the two runts revealed that while filming City of God he was made to fear Leandro Firmino (Lil Zé) as a person rather
than his character, so while shooting this scene the younger runts fear would
have been real not acting, this brings a feel of verisimilitude to this scene;
this being what creates a strong response from the audience as knowing the
child is really in fear while filming brings out an emotional attachment to the
character and in a woman’s case her motherly instincts would kick in and would
be hit hard emotionally by this scene and want to protect the child in the
film. Also this scene has a shallow depth of focus making the gun in Lil Zé’s hand the focal point of this scene, hinting that this
scene will not end well because the gun is the main focus. Not only does this
scene generate a response for the audience but also the actors, as after being
in this emotionally heavy scene Darlan Cunha (Steak and Fries) couldn’t talk about
being in this film when asked about it in the 10 years later documentary because
it was too real for him.
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